1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to commercial environments, and more particularly to generating an optimized price schedule for a product.
2. Background of the Invention
An important decision for a business to make is determining the prices of products, goods, or services offered by the business. Pricing decisions are important to a business's success or failure, since these decisions may have a critical impact on customer demand, profitability, and business operations. Informed pricing decisions, however, may be difficult to make, since these decisions may need to reflect a large number of business objectives and operating constraints, and may need to be made for a large number of items across a large number of sales locations. Moreover, pricing decisions may need to be frequently updated in order to adjust for rapid changes in business conditions, such as changes in inventory, demand, or a competitor's prices. Consequently, businesses may benefit greatly from price optimization, which may allow businesses to make effective pricing decisions.
A business may generate a price schedule over a time horizon, and may optimize the price schedule in order to maximize the benefit of a product to the business. For example, a price schedule may be optimized to maximize expected profits or revenues over a time horizon, subject to operating constraints such as an allowed frequency of price changes, a maximum number of price changes, or an inventory target level. Optimizing price schedules, however, may be computationally difficult. As a result, previous techniques for generating an optimized price schedule have been inadequate.